Atlantic Notes: Ndour, Boozer, Celtics, Prokhorov

The Knicks tried to make Maurice Ndour the latest to back out of a deal with the Mavericks this summer, but Ndour wouldn’t break his commitment to Dallas, a source told Marc Berman of the New York Post. The undrafted power forward stuck to a three-year pact that will give him a fully guaranteed salary worth more than the rookie minimum, according to Berman. The Knicks had only been offering a $200K partial guarantee until the Mavs swooped in, and New York’s attempt to win over Ndour after he gave his word to Dallas came up short, Berman writes. Still, if Ndour becomes a free agent again soon, he’d love to return to the Knicks, for whom he played in summer league, the Post scribe says. Already, DeAndre Jordan and Richard Jefferson have turned their backs on the Mavs, but Jefferson did so with owner Mark Cuban’s blessing. In any case, there’s more out of New York amid the last from the Atlantic Division:

• New York’s interest in Carlos Boozer is “tepid,” Berman writes in the same piece, and that jibes with his report from two weeks ago that the team held internal conversations about the free agent power forward but hadn’t made a move on him. In any case, Knicks team president Phil Jackson would still like to sign a big man, Berman adds.
• The offseason has been a success for the Celtics because they acquired depth that vastly improved the team while still maintaining the copious draft assets that they can use in future trades, opines Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe. That’s doubly so because the C’s acquired players with motivation to play to their fullest, Washburn adds. We asked you to weigh in Boston’s offseason so far right here.
• Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov struck an upbeat tone in brief comments Tuesday, but conspicuous by his absence from Prokhorov’s remarks was Deron Williams, the marquee free agent signing of the Prokhorov era whom the Nets let go in a buyout deal this month, notes Tim Bontemps of the New York Post. “First of all, we had a really good offseason – better than a lot of people expected,” Prokhorov said. “Without a lot of noise, we got a lot done. Brook [Lopez] and Thaddeus [Young] are staying with us, which gives us continuity in our frontcourt. Joe Johnson stays as a core player. We also have high expectations for Bojan Bogdanovic, who showed us real flashes of brilliance in his first year on the Nets.”